Outside, I’m walking toward my horse when I hear shouts from the edge of town, from the direction of the fields. I shoot a glance at the prince. We need to get going.
Now.
Before anybody questions us.
Andras guides his horse nearer. “Let’s move while daylight favors our journey.”
“Thank you so much,” I tell Younkin, swinging up on Cloud and patting her neck. I never thought I’d be so happy to see a horse.
But the man is distracted by the shouting children running toward us, so he gives me a quick wave before turning his attentionback to the furor.
“The fields!”
“They’re growing!”
“They grew!”
“There are crops!”
Chitai catches my urgency and speaks up. “Is it a game? Your younglings are very high-spirited, innkeeper. We wish you a good day and hope to visit again on our return journey.”
With that, we head out of the village at a brisk pace, not moving so fast that we give the appearance of fleeing, but not slowly enough to invite conversation, either. I smile and nod at a few of the villagers but don’t slow Cloud’s pace.
Behind us, the excited chatter grows louder and louder, but we don’t look back, don’t hesitate, and don’t talk among ourselves until we’re nearly half an hour outside of town. Then Andras wheels his horse around and rides back to me.
“The crops grew?” His voice is drier than my throat.
I sigh. “Artemisen was busy.”
He studies my face and neck and raises a single dark eyebrow. “She wasn’t the only one.”
On my other side, Kaelen turns to look at the Sylvan and raises an eyebrow of his own. “Perhaps we should get farther away before we stop to discuss the actions of goddesses. I don’t want the fine people of Merrion to decide we had anythingmagicalto do with their unexpected good fortune.”
Andras laughs. “Fair enough. But I want to hear about this—thecrops—when we break for camp.”
With that, he canters ahead, and Chitai gallops past us to join him. Behind us, Bern and Sergeant Neville ride next to each other, talking, and behind them, Trick drives the wagon. Elianna is probably taking a nap, which seems to be one of her favorite things, and also her preferred way of avoiding conversations she doesn’t want to have.
Trick turns his head away when he sees me looking back at him, and my belly roils sickly. I feel like I’ve let him down, even though I know that makes no sense. We’re only friends; he spoke freely to me inthe past of his romantic liaisons. Neither one of us ever tried to move our relationship in that direction.
We eat our midday meal on the road, since nobody wants to stop for long, which thankfully postpones the discussion everyone wants to have about the crops. It also delays any conversation between Trick and me. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing, even though I’m already embarrassed about what he knows.
Or what I’ll tell him.
Most important, I can’t let any awkwardness or even anger between us drive me back down into the fog, especially not now. Gray Mind doesn’t always care about external events; it claws what it wants from me with greedy, grasping fingers, taking especially vicious delight in ruining happy moments. If I fall back there, after the best night of my entire life …
I’ll only feel more helpless and hopeless.
The vicious cycle of Gray Mind: If my brain drives me into the fog of nothingness even when I should feel happy, how can I possibly predict when it will strike? And if I can’t predict it, how can I ever hope to avoid it?
I flinch at the memory of the one and only time I tried to explain this to the Sister Superior.
You can’t be sad, Soli. You’ve nothing to be sad about! It’s the summer solstice. You were just out in town for the Blossom Festival. Now we know this entire display of Gray Mind is nothing but a farce. A facade you use to hide from work.
I cowered before her, knowing the lash was coming, knowing I could stop it if I could only pretend hard enough to be happy.
Slow tears ran down my face when I couldn’t find the strength to do even that.
Fine. Why don’t I give you something to cry about, then?
